Jeanie Buss recently flipped through a photo album that belonged to her father, the late Lakers owner Dr. Jerry Buss. On the hunt for pictures that could appear in a documentary she is helping produce about the Showtime-era Lakers, she paused on a page of photos from her childhood.

There in a star-spangled leotard and knee-high red boots was Wonder Woman, the hero of millions of 20th century girls – including Jeanie Buss.

Here, Wonder Woman was scaling a fence. And here Wonder Woman rode a plastic horse. The action figure Jerry Buss gave his first daughter performed various acts of backyard heroism, all carefully assembled and photographed by a 10-year-old Jeanie.

Now 55, Jeanie Buss is at the helm of the Lakers and the Southern California News Group’s most powerful person in Los Angeles sports after an explosive year in which she seized control and breathed life into the family business. Before Jeanie did those things, however, she was a girl who collected comic books and especially loved a certain DC Comics superhero.

Jeanie grew up believing she could do anything. That’s what her father always told her. She could do anything, and what better role model than Wonder Woman, who understood her powers and how to use them?

“My dad encouraged it,” she said in her El Segundo office last month, where a Wonder Woman mug sits on a shelf. “My dad encouraged a strong woman.”

Looking at those photos of the plastic doll, she was transported back to childhood and saw her current life from a new perspective. She thought, “All of this makes sense.”

One of the last gifts Jerry Buss gave Jeanie was Wonder Woman #1, the first issued comic book from 1942. When he died in 2012, he left the Lakers to his six children, but stipulated that Jeanie was to be the controlling owner, with total oversight. Over the past few months, she was forced to flex her muscle in ways she never had, guiding the organization out of what she called “a very gray area for the team.” She fired her older brother Jim as president of basketball operations and sent longtime General Manager Mitch Kupchak packing, as well.

To rescue the franchise from its streak of losing seasons, she hired franchise legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson, giving herself a friend in the seat where previously she only encountered resistance and confusion.

In the process, she fought off a courtroom crusade by her two older brothers in a dramatic but brief bid for control of the team.

Jeanie Buss emerged as the unquestioned leader of the Lakers and the primary ambassador of one of the most essential symbols of Los Angeles prestige.

“I do feel like I fought a battle,” she said, “and I feel more ownership.”

The breakthrough can be traced to an Amazonian warrior molded from clay who received her powers directly from the Greek gods; to a backyard fence and little Jeanie Buss behind the camera.

“She really was attracted to that good person that had good intentions, heroic, wants to make the earth a better place,” said Linda Rambis, the Lakers’ manager of special events and Jeanie’s closest friend. “Maybe that really stuck in her heart for all these years.

Jeanie named a film company she owns – Gold Rope Productions – after the golden Lasso of Truth Wonder Woman wielded to break down evildoers.

“No doubt she’s an inspiration for me,” Jeanie said.

So when the moment came that Jeanie felt the Lakers were in peril, she acted, summoning fortitude some wondered if she even had.

“I don’t think she ever knew that she would have the strength to make the tough decisions,” Rambis said. “I think that’s probably her testing her own will.”

On Feb. 21, she fired her own brother and effectively hit reset on a franchise that had sunk lower than it ever had; lower than, she believed, it ever should have.

“I didn’t get new power,” she said. “I had the power. I just chose to exercise the power.”

Dinner with Magic

Before the Lakers hosted the Denver Nuggets on Jan. 17 in what would be their 31st loss in 46 games,#xa0;Jeanie Buss sat down for dinner with Johnson, the Hall of Fame Lakers point guard who remained a close friend. Jeanie is two years younger than Magic, and the two have shared a “genuine, innocent, youthful connection” from the day he arrived as a 20-year-old rookie in 1979, Rambis said.

On that night, the friends reminisced about the days of Lakers glory, and Jeanie shared her concerns about the direction of the franchise. She had already given serious thought to deposing her brother and Kupchak from their roles.

“Earvin and I were basically raised by the same person,” she said. “We see things the same way.”

He explained what he believed #xa0;the franchise needed, what was missing. To Jeanie, “it was music to my ears,” she said. “I could understand what his vision was. There’s something about being with like-minded people.”

Within the walls of the Lakers headquarters, Jeanie’s grand corner office had begun to feel like a cell. She could not make sense of the strategy employed by her brother and Kupchak. They had cycled through four coaches in five seasons and under their watch the Lakers won a combined 63 games in three full seasons. Last summer, they spent $136 million of precious cap space on veterans Luol Deng and Timofey Mozgov, who made little sense for the direction of the team.

“I just didn’t understand what the thought process was,” she said, “whether our philosophies were so far apart that I couldn’t recognize what they were doing, or they couldn’t explain it well.”

The family trust established by her father called for a divide between the business of the Lakers and the basketball side. Jeanie ran business. But she was still the boss, and the boss “couldn’t comprehend” what was going on in her own building.

In contrast, Johnson laid out a roadmap that resonated.

“It was a really innocent dinner,” said Rambis, who was part of the group that January night. “I don’t think anyone at that table had an inclination that anything like this was going to happen, in terms of premeditation.”

Nonetheless, the wheels were in motion.

“When she felt that sort of comfort and understanding and alignment with him at that dinner,” Rambis said, “I think she just started thinking about, ‘This is a person I could work with.'”

Jeanie had already told Jim Buss and Kupchak that she felt like she no longer had a voice in the organization.

“I can’t explain what you’re doing to the outside world,” she said she told them. “I just feel like I’m spinning my wheels. What is going on?”

The wheels stopped spinning on Feb. 2 when Johnson was hired as an adviser to ownership. Three weeks after that, he was elevated to president of basketball operations and Kobe Bryant’s longtime agent Rob Pelinka was added as his general manager.

For the first time in her tenure, Jeanie has a leadership in place that she trusts. The team has a coach, Luke Walton, who wants to play fast and maximize the skill of young stars like Lonzo Ball and Brandon Ingram. The past four years have made her appreciate how difficult winning really is, how special it was to win 10 championships in 30 years.

It will be especially challenging to reach those heights again in a Western Conference dominated by Golden State. Given those challenges, is it possible that the Lakers won’t win another title in Jeanie’s lifetime? She doesn’t think so.

“I believe that Earvin will win another championship,” she said. “I believe in him.”

Her job is to give him the tools, the people and the platform.

Johnson’s return, however, closed the door on a Lakers reunion with Jerry West, the former executive who was a consultant in Golden State through this spring and had interest in rejoining Lakers before ultimately signing on with the Clippers as an adviser.

“I wasn’t going to get in a position of talking to somebody who was under contract to another team,” Buss said when asked about West. “Earvin and I had that conversation and I could really see his vision and he and I matched up well. I want Earvin and Rob to have their vision of Lakers basketball realized.

“So I think we’re in good hands.”

The praise for Jeanie rolled in. ESPN’s Rachel Nichols opened her daily NBA show “The Jump” by saying, “Underestimate this woman at your own peril, she knows how to get stuff done.”

That included triumphing in court when brother Jim and Johnny Buss attempted to overthrow Jeanie as controlling owner by removing her from the board of directors. Jeanie describes the play as an attempt “create chaos through different mechanisms that really, really were not right.”

The effort was resolved within a month, and ended with the brothers resigning as trustees of the team and staunch Jeanie allies Janie and Joey, the president of the South Bay Lakers, replacing them.

“The threat was serious,” said attorney Adam Streisand, who represented Jeanie in the dispute. He said the hostile takeover attempt “would have had long and disastrous consequences for the team.”

Streisand called Jeanie Buss “the lioness at the gate . equal part mom and protector of the pride.”

“She is going to protect the Lakers’ status as the marquee NBA franchise,” he said, “whatever it takes.”

Moving in one direction

These days all of the conflict seems like a distant memory. Jeanie talks regularly with Johnson and feels like everyone in the organization is moving in the same direction. She describes a camaraderie and level of communication that had been missing since her dad died.

For the first time, Jeanie had a hand in the draft process. She didn’t encourage Johnson and Pelinka to select a certain player; she says she would never want to step on the toes of team executives in such a manner. But she met with the top prospects who came through, went to lunch with them.

“The one thing I’ve learned is parents think their kids are the greatest thing ever,” she said. “And I admire that. That’s a passion, and I think that LaVar just really believes in his son and LaVar just wears it on his sleeve.”

Overall, Jeanie doesn’t have many complaints about the new era she forced in.

“She’s been on board with everything we want to do,” Johnson said, “We bring her in, Rob and I and say, ‘Hey, this is what we’re thinking. What do you think?’ We’re going to get her opinion.”

While she defers to the basketball executives, Walton made it clear Jeanie does not just listen then hang up the phone.

“If it’s something really big,” he said. “She either signs off on it or not. She’s been incredible to work with. She’s smart, she knows the business, she knows the people.”

There is a shift happening within the Lakers, even though they haven’t played a game in more than three months and the roster has changed dramatically since last year’s 26-56 campaign. Jeanie can sense it.

“At the end of the day there has to be success on the court,” she said. “We can sit here and talk about how everything makes sense and this is a nice roster, but you need to see games. I can feel that excitement and enthusiasm that I didn’t feel in the last three four years.”

She said she sleeps better now. #xa0;Recently, she and Rambis went to the movies.

“She subtly has a strength,” Rambis said. “It’s just similar. It’s very subtle. She doesn’t overpower you with it. There’s a humbleness and a shyness to her character.”

She was describing Wonder Woman, but also Jeanie.

“She doesn’t want to be the loudest person in the room,” Rambis continued. “She doesn’t want to be the smartest person in the room. She wants to learn with others. She wants to collaborate with others.”

One is the most powerful woman in the world; the other is the most powerful woman in sports business. It’s a title at which Jeanie blushes, but one she proved this year she will not easily give up.

“My dad put me in this position,” she said, “and intended to keep me in this position.”